I chat with my neighbor about a particularly
beautiful moss-covered tree at the edge of our property. An hour later, I casually
snap a photograph out the window to test out the iPad camera; I am surprised to
notice that the tree we’d been talking about is framed in the picture. Less than thirty minutes later, as I lazily stare outside, I see the very tree from our
conversation—the tree featured in the photo—uproot and topple to the ground from a huge wind gust! It is a moment of reverent awe and ecstatic serendipity: the power of nature takes
down the tree suddenly and unexpectedly, but I have unwittingly preserved the tree through the act of photographing it.
* *
*
I walk outside in the black night of torrential
rain. I catch a glimpse of a faint light and realize that the moon is visible
through a veil of rain. As I look up, I see constellations playing hide and
seek behind dark panels of swift-moving clouds. Instantly, Earth and firmament
reverse themselves and I am peering down into the blackness inside a magician’s
box—the only thing I can see is a shining sprawl of gems.
* *
*
A friend eagerly introduces me to a
new forest trail. The torrential rain has continued into our late morning hike
and we are soaked head to toe within a few minutes. We talk, laugh, and marvel
at the pathside trees and ferns. At the end of the trail is an opening onto a
beach, right then flooded to high tide. A window to the sea, the opening is
framed on two sides and the top by a canopy of alders and firs.
* *
*
I am sharing with a client on Skype how creating
beauty in nature is a means for infusing inspiration into the stifled parts of
our writing. I glance out my window and see a Steller’s jay feasting on the
suet I just tucked into the feeder. As the client unfolds tales of a praying
mantis and hummingbirds outside his writer’s retreat, I look out my window
again and notice a kaleidoscope of birds at my feeder: several northern
flickers, a couple more jays, a few dozen juncos, a male and female downy
woodpecker pair, and a gorgeously-plumed little guy I can’t identify. I sense
that my client has invoked this avian menagerie in my yard via his excited recounting
of intimate experiences with nature.
All blog images created & photographed by Jennifer J. Wilhoit unless otherwise noted. Please circulate images with photo credit: "©2018 JenniferJWilhoit/TEALarbor stories. AllRightsReserved."
